Guide
Moving off spreadsheets
Spreadsheets run more wholesale businesses than any software ever written, and they were the right tool — until the day two people edited the same file, or the price column turned out to be a note, or nobody could say what was actually in stock.
The signs it's time
- Two versions of the truth: the office file and the one a rep copied to their phone in March.
- Prices as prose: a column that says "usually 42, ask Sam for the big accounts".
- Stock by walking: the only way to know what's on the shelf is to go and look.
- Orders in five places: WhatsApp, email, voicemail, a notebook, and someone's memory.
Move the catalogue first
Everything else hangs off the product list, so it goes first — and it's the step people overestimate. A spreadsheet with names, SKUs, costs and prices imports directly (Excel or CSV), and if your products live in QuickBooks, an exported item list imports too, categories included. Most catalogues come across in one import. Don't clean the whole file first: fix the products you actually sell, and let the long tail get corrected as it comes up.
What day one looks like
- Orders land in one list, priced for the customer they belong to, instead of five inboxes.
- Photograph the shelf as you go. A product with no photo gets one from a phone in seconds — snap, barcode, cost, price, next. Doing a walk of the warehouse this way doubles as your first honest stock count.
- The spreadsheet stays open for a week or two, as the thing you check against, not the thing you work in. Retiring it is a result, not a prerequisite.
What stays in a spreadsheet
Honestly: some things. Your accountant's books live wherever your accountant works. One-off analyses are what spreadsheets are for, and every list and report exports to CSV or Excel precisely so you can keep doing them. The goal isn't to abolish spreadsheets — it's to stop the business's live state living in one.
What the import handles is on the products & pricing page.